Mountain

Well, I must say, Los Angeles is splendid at this time of year. The imaginary boyfriend and I are turning a nice nut brown, and the infinity pool remains in our possession throughout July - we overheard the housekeeper muttering curses under her breath, complaining about her employers' penchant for extended holidays. They had called on her at short notice to check up on the parakeets in the aviary. We hid under the sun loungers, unsure whether the housekeeper had the imaginative faculties to see us, not taking any chances. But we're not doing any harm by being here, merely borrowing and, in fact, keeping an eye on the property.

It is 10 in the morning Pacific Coast Time. I am streaming the Wimbledon semi-finals in one tab, and writing this in the other. Every few minutes I receive very expensive text messages from the idiot in England, containing an array of colourful obscenities directed at Murray when he's being shit (ie. at the moment, having just lost the second set).

I should at least contrive a segue from this random introduction (LA and tennis) to the subject I intend to cover in the blog (a visitation to Mount Hood at the beginning of May) but the disparity, I'm afraid, is too great to bridge, and I simply cannot be arsed to fake it any more, ha ha. I could perhaps comment on the weather difference, but that would be ever so transparent and blah-de-blah. Nadal is stamping all over Murray now, British morale is down, and Murray's lacklustre form is in danger of infecting my writing.

TEXT FROM THE IDIOT: "well, he can shove that backhand up his ass."

Okay, so, I'm pulling myself together, and shall say some quick words about the ski cabin.

It was the weekend of Osama's death, but we were all so incredulous when we heard the news via a series of abhorrent, posturing facebook statuses. The Reed ski cabin is halfway up Mt. Hood, about 1.5 hours drive from Portland. It is not isolated as such, but our one night there felt so snowed-in and removed, reality bites from the outside world, such as the death of America's most wanted man, seemed loaded with unreality. The party = me, her, Justine, Lucia, Aurore and Febee. Eric and Aaron had been meaning to come too, but were feeling delicate after Stop Making Sense the night before. Girly mini-break it was, then. We arrived with quite an unnecessary quantity of food from Trader Joe's, and piled the kitchen table with a very happy Sunday lunch. The cabin underwent renovations earlier in the year - it is super posh now, with a sauna and everything, and table tennis in the basement. In the late afternoon we paid a visit to Timberline Lodge further up the mountain, famous for being the hotel exterior in The Shining.

*BUGGER: MATCH POINT TO NADAL*

(saved)

None of us were wearing the correct shoes for the snow at Timberline, but we braved a 'hike' regardless. The views were spectacular. But I needn't really have said that - it's kind of a given isn't it? We drank a signature hot chocolate in the hotel cafe/restaurant, and the girls discussed the politics of Renn Fayre 'kissing' in raised voices, and I pretended not to know them. I retreated to the cool wood-lacquer games room downstairs, while the idiot embarrassed herself with fantastical RF designs on certain friends and enemies. Back at the cabin, we drank cider and tried desperately to make some sort of impression on the food. Leonard Cohen sleepy at night. The idiot read Paradise by Toni Morrison at stressed-out hyper speed and, by 12pm the next morning we were back at Reed, with that JOFM Monday class in an hour.

*MATCH LOST. MURRAY OUT. AGAIN. CONSETTE HAS NEVER SAID FUCK IN THIS BLOG BEFORE, BUT SHE THINKS THAT TODAY SHE SHALL SAY FUCK.*

*FUCK*

This is officially the most badly organised, gramatically-challenged, suspectly adverbed post I have ever written, and frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

Consette x